She stirred. “Go back to sleep, little love,” he murmured. “Everything will be all right.” He patted her leg and hummed her a song he had sung to her most nights since she was born. Her eyes began to droop closed again. He watched the curve of her nose and her long eyelashes, and thought about not being able to watch her grow up—of sunrises and sunsets, and how many other fathers would still have what he would lose by the end of this day. A lump welled up in his throat. He wanted to take her in his arms and run away. Hyougen turned his head and saw Aliahe looking at him from the doorway. She knew what he was thinking—she always did. He felt helpless, and a moment passed where he thought he would just march down to that shore and beg the Dageians to spare his family, at least. He would do anything to hold on to that moment in that room, basking in the warm breeze and orange glow of the sunlight, with the three of them alive and a touch away from each other—anything. A coward’s thought, and he killed it as soon as it passed, but it left his knees shaking all the same.“I am ready,” Aliahe said. “I will take her and join the others at the hill.”“There are more of them than we can fight.” He hadn’t meant to speak at all. He struggled to find better words and found that he could not. “So much more. It will take them all but ten minutes to smash our defenses. She is my heir. They won’t let her live to see sunrise. I would…I would sooner end her life myself.” He looked at his own, trembling fingers, and shook his head. “But so Ab help me, I don’t know if I can. I don’t know what to do.” A sob escaped him.He heard Aliahe draw closer and reached for her. Her fingers curled into his hair as he laid his head against her belly and closed his eyes. He could feel her every breath and wanted nothing more than to wrap himself in the certainty of it, to be lulled to sleep by the rhythm of her pulse and then wake up to the sweet silence of a morning that was theirs alone. “You are right, of course,” she said, after what felt like forever. She drew away from him to wrap her arms around Mahe’s sleeping form. “We are blood of this land. We cannot let the Dageians taint what we are. Our people will fight and die trying. We must join them.”“We will.” Hyougen forced himself to his feet, placed his hand under her jaw and kissed her. “Say your goodbyes,” he said. He watched her kiss their daughter’s cheeks, her forehead, her lips—watched her with the ache of a man who knew it was the last time he would ever see such things. And then his brave queen stood up, wiping the few tears in her eyes, and told him to take her away. “Don’t let the Dageians hurt her,” she said. She had never looked more beautiful in his life. ​

It has been years since his brother’s accident. Kefier was only just beginning to live a normal life–at least, as normal as it could get for a mercenary from a run-down town. And then an errand goes wrong and he finds himself holding his friend’s bloody corpse. Already once branded a murderer, he is pursued by men he once considered friends and stumbles into the midst of a war between two mages. One bears a name long forgotten in legend; the other is young, arrogant Ylir, who takes special interest in making sure Kefier is not killed by his associates. The apex of their rivalry: a terrible creature with one eye, cast from the womb of a witch, with powers so immense whoever possesses it holds the power to bring the continent to its knees.Now begins a tale with roots reaching beyond the end of another. Here, a father swears vengeance for his slain children; there, a peasant girl struggles to feed her family. A wayward prince finds his way home and a continent is about to be torn asunder. And Kefier is only beginning to understand how it all began the moment he stood on that cliff and watched his brother fall…

Aina’s Breath

Enosh, apprentice to one of the richest merchants in the Kag, is secretly heir to a broken line of mages. Because of The Empire of Dageis’ quest for sources of the agan–the life-source that mages use for power–his people have been reduced to scavengers, his culture diminished to a speck in the wind. For more than ten years, he has helped raise a conjured beast to use as a weapon against the Dageians. But Enosh’s plans are falling apart. A powerful enemy has escaped and Enosh needs to capture him before he reaches Dageis. His quest is further complicated after he finds himself used as a pawn by Gasparian nobles.On the other end of the continent, Sume, daughter to a Jin-Sayeng hero, must return to her roots to save her country and bring honour to her father’s name. To do this, she must befriend a prince and understand the terrible, corrupting nature of power and the reason her father was driven to walk away from it all those years ago…Meanwhile, Kefier, Enosh’s agan-blind brother, is forced back into a life of violence. As he struggles with the notion that hands, once bloodied, never stay clean for long, he finds himself occupied with an unexpected burden: his own brother’s daughter.

Sapphire’s Flight

The battle at Shi-uin has left scars. The rise of Gorrhen yn Garr to power seems unstoppable. As nations fall, the lines between love and duty become blurred and Kefier, Sume, and Enosh must learn to live with the choices they have made.

Author Bio

K.S. Villoso was born in a dank hospital on an afternoon in Albay, Philippines, and things have generally been okay since then. After spending most of her childhood in a slum area in Taguig (where she dodged death-defying traffic, ate questionable food, and fell into open-pit sewers more often than one ought to), she and her family immigrated to Vancouver, Canada, where they spent the better part of two decades trying to chase the North American Dream. She is now living amidst the forest and mountains with her family, children, and dogs in Anmore, BC.